I could never have imagined a state election result in one of Germany’s 16 states making the top story on the website of The New York Times for an entire Sunday. But the record success of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, a part of eastern Germany, has put far-right extremists on the cusp of power for the first time since the Nazi Era. Naturally, everyone in Germany, and abroad, is worried. After all, we Germans should know better and have a playbook to stop extremist powers. When he got into office, CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised he would cut the AfD in half. Yet, Mr. Merz and many others in his center-right party are repeating old mistakes.
Contents:
The Results in Saxony Anhalt: A Hung Parlament?
AFD’s MAGA coalition
How Conservatives Enabled Facism
Two (Irreversible) Mistakes
But first, let’s take a look at what happened last Sunday.
The Results in Saxony Anhalt: A Hung Parlament?
Before we look at the data behind the AfD’s coalition, I should note that, while most AFD voters live in the west, East Germany is their stronghold. Voters there have long felt left behind since reunification 36 years ago and have always been more open to extremist actors.
The 43.8% they received in Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday were the AfD’s best-ever result in a state or federal election, but they fell short of their self-declared goal: winning an outright majority. Coalitions are the norm in Germany, but every notable party has long ruled out partnering with them. The 39 seats the AFD won are three short of the 42 seats required for a majority. This is where the BSW comes into play, which managed to eke into parliament by narrowly clearing the 5% threshold. They won 5 seats.
The BSW is a newer, ideologically complicated party mostly defined by anti-establishment and pro-Russian positions. The latter issue provides common ground between the AFD and the BSW. The BSW in Saxony-Anhalt has said it might support an AFD candidate for Minister-President (sort of the prime minister of a state). The AFD could then try to govern with a minority, hoping the BSW or some unfaithful CDU members might support some of their bills. A coalition of AFD-BSW, which would have a slim, 43-seat majority, would not be necessary if AfD state leader Siegmund is elected as leader.
Should the minister-president election fail, we would likely be in for a snap election in Saxony-Anhalt. All the while, the push to ask the Supreme Court to consider a ban for the AFD is gaining renewed steam.1 Quite a few elected AfD members in Saxony-Anhalt have supported Neo-Nazi-ideology in the past, and the party’s platform is unconstitutional in parts.
AFD’s MAGA Coalition
While the AfD’s landslide victory won them most voter groups, the differences between these groups are the same as those we see in federal German elections and state elections in the west.
This data shows that the AFD isn’t just similar to the MAGA movement in their ideals; they also share a similar coalition. Take the education gap. In the US, Trump excels with uneducated voters while struggling with college-educated ones. Infratest Dimap, Germany’s leading pollster and exit-poll provider2, divides education into simple, intermediary, and high. High education includes all voters who finished their 13-year high school diploma, qualifying them for college, and upwards.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AFD performed worst among highly educated voters and best among voters who received a basic education.
Among college-educated voters, the AFD only finished at 24%, slightly ahead of the Green Party (20%).
Similar to Trump, the AFD also did better with men than with women by about 10 points, and about half of its net gain this election came from previous non-voters. So the influx of low-propensity voters, who helped elevate Saxony-Anhalt’s voter turnout to a record high, mostly helped the AFD. That is a trend we also see in America, where Trump turns out people who care little about politics.
How Conservatives Enabled Facism
How did the AFD get this far?
Well, the current economic struggles in Germany, high gas prices, and a long period of worldwide inflation are the perfect breeding ground for extremism. However, that doesn’t mean these extremist powers necessarily can grab power.
In their 2018 book How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt examine how democracies died in the past century, at times due to erosion or due to drastic overhaul. The rise of fascism in 1930s Europe presents cases that show a quick and drastic overhaul of democracy. Fascism arose in most European countries, yet it was only successful in a few. The most infamous case was the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
Levitsky & Ziblatt discovered that the actions of key power brokers played a role in deciding whether or not fascism was stopped or enabled in Europe. In elections in Belgium, fascism was on the rise, and the pressure on the center-right and conservative side to include them in a government was immense. But key players refused. Instead of choosing the partner with the most overlap on the issues and thereby partnering with extremists, conservatives chose to bridge larger gaps between left-leaning but Democratic opponents. In other words, they build a firewall against fascism and were able to sit out the strong election results from the far right. In Finland, the traditional conservatives took the same approach after their initial collaboration with fascists brought the country’s democracy to the brink of collapse.
In Germany, conservative leaders took a different approach. They tried to partner with Hitler, thinking they could soften or tame him on key issues, and they thought that they could peel off his voters by taking over his issues. As we know today, they were wrong. Traditional power brokers, often center-to-center-right figures, had options to act as gatekeepers and shut fascists out of power. In Germany, these gatekeepers failed, and Germany vowed to never make the same mistake again.3
Almost a hundred years later, the far-right is on the cusp of power again, if only in one of sixteen states. The AfD’s success has prompted despair in the factions of the CDU/CSU, and their leaders now have to tread carefully in order to avoid two costly mistakes. One would be fatal; the other is one they have been making for years.
Two (Irreversible) Mistakes
First, they need to keep the so-called firewall intact. The firewall, in German called Brandmauer, has been a constant in German politics. It’s a promise by all democratic parties not to work with far-right parties. Democratic parties will form wide ideological coalitions to keep the AFD out of power at all costs. It’s exactly the approach that saved many nations from falling to fascism before WWII.
Some CDU officials, especially in eastern Germany, have already questioned the firewall as the AFD grows stronger. 34% of CDU voters think their party should consider working with the AFD in some cases. Even CDU members in the east, however, are bound by a strict directive from their party leader in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz.4 Rumors suggested that one or two elected CDU members might switch allegiances to hand the AFD their majority, but the BSW’s success might render that scenario moot. (It would take three CDU crossovers)
The second mistake is one the CDU/CSU has been making for years now. It’s the idea that you only have to take over the extremists’ talking points to win back voters. History has shown that emphasizing the far-right’s issues only ends up helping the far-right. Political scientists have found that the strategy seldom works. Instead, you only legitimize extremist ideas for voters, prompting them to accept said extremism more easily.
In the 2025 federal election (February), Mr. Merz pushed immigration issues into the spotlight, even though migration numbers had been decreasing and were miles below crisis-era averages. In the end, the AFD achieved a record result of 21%, while the CDU fell from previous polling highs and finished at 28%. Merz took the AfD’s success as yet another sign that his party needs to double down on immigration. Since Merz became the CDU’s nominee for chancellor in September of 2024, the AFD has surged from 18% to 29%, while the CDU fell from 32% to 21%. One party surged 11 points, the other plummeted by the same amount. Mr. Merz promised to cut the AFD in half when he took over the CDU. He has done the opposite.
Mr. Merz has promised he would be able to govern in a way that the AFD naturally loses its strength. So far, he has failed to do that. Other players in his party, together with the Greens, the SPD and the Left, have long pushed to finally ask Germany’s Supreme Court to consider the case for banning the AFD. It’s a rarely used, unique tool devised by postwar Germany to protect Democracy at all costs. You can read on how that would work here.
In the coming weeks, Mr. Merz will be at a crossroads. He can double down further and crack down even more on immigration that is already dangerously low for the economy. Or, he can learn from history’s mistakes and flip the narrative.
Asking the SC of Germany to consider a ban requires a simple majority in parliament (Bundestag) or the parliament of state governments (Bundesrat). 2/3 of judges would have to vote in favor of a ban for it to take effect.
Polls as well as the results from the exit-poll all tend to be extremely accurate in Germany.
The gatekeepers, of course, extend beyond political positions. An example is the corporate world, which cozied up to Hitler. In the US, we see a similar short-sightedness today, with tech companies courting favors from an autocrat. To get a full overview of how important gatekeepers and their decisions are, I can only recommend How Democracies Die by Ziblatt and Levitsky.
Mr. Merz actually was the first CDU leader to pursue legislation with AFD support ahead of the 2025 federal election. The decision let to massive nationwide protests.